Pages

Monday, January 31, 2011

Get ready for an influx of save-the-dates from Illinois. The state’s governor, Pat Quinn, signed “historic” legislation Wednesday allowing civil unions for both gay and straight couples. The bill is considered a hard-won victory for gay and lesbian couples, since it will give gay couples many of the same rights as married couples—although it does not establish same-sex marriage.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Amy Sullivan also wonders why Palin didn't "hold off on the lashing out at her critics and casting herself as a victim for just a few more days":

Palin simply can't help it. You know that friend of yours for whom everything is always about them? Your dad is in the hospital and your cat just died and you lost your job, and yet she blows up at you because you forgot her birthday? Palin is that friend.

"Things that are clearly condoned in the Bible are now mysteriously prohibited, such as polygamy, concubines (well, fundamentalists seem to call their concubines mistresses these days), slaves, and incest. Things that are celebrated, indeed the raison d’être of the New Testament, are totally ignored or even ridiculed, such as foregoing wealth, distributing wealth to the poor, rendering aid, forgiving trespasses, and simply loving one another. Adherents of the Bible misuse it greatly, and few use it for good."

Loughner was probably too insane to have really participated in anti-Semitic politics, or, for that matter, in the Tea Party. But it is important to note that Giffords has been relentlessly demonized by the right, the rhetoric around her charged with violence. And such rhetoric is dangerous precisely because of the effect it can have on the unhinged. Loughner was crazy, but he was also responsive to certain real-world political currents, particularly the right’s nightmare vision of federal power run amok.

There is a distinction between guilt and regret. Sarah Palin is not responsible for this latest excrescence of violence. But if Sarah Palin does not regret the fact that she put a gun-sight cross-hair on a public figure who was subsequently shot in the head, then she is telling us something important about her moral character.

There is a distinction between guilt and regret. Sarah Palin is not responsible for this latest excrescence of violence. But if Sarah Palin does not regret the fact that she put a gun-sight cross-hair on a public figure who was subsequently shot in the head, then she is telling us something important about her moral character.

This is not the same as guilt. It's called responsibility. So far, not a single leading Republican has offered even the slightest remorse for the atmosphere they stoked to win back power. If they do not, they will make the fire next time even more destructive, by emboldening the very forces they claim to have nothing to do with.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

The good news is that already, in just a few days time, this kind of talk from Beck, Palin and Angle is now being seen for what it really is — something not to be touched by fair citizens or ambitious politicians. And the long-overdue revulsion is because such poisons — death threats in place of reasoned argument, fetishizing of guns, glib talk of “taking someone out” — were used so carelessly, as if they didn’t matter.

Well, they do matter. Even if the gunman’s motives are never truly known, the splattering of so much innocent blood on a Saturday morning gives a nation as fractious as ours a chance to think about what happens when words are used as weapons, and weapons are used in place of words.

20 people are mowed down in a grocery store and Palin thinks she's the victim? Typical. You don't get to spend 3 years blowing a dog whistle and yelling fire in a theater then get to wash your hands of it when it goes bad," - from a commenter on Politico.

But the level of animus toward the new president and anyone supporting him reached preposterous proportions at the beginning of this presidency; the gracelessness from the Congressional leadership on down, from "You lie!" to "death panels" and "palling around with terrorists" ... this is a real problem in a country with its fair share of disturbed individuals and much more than its fair share of guns.

The Palin forces, who have fomented this dynamic more viciously and recklessly than any other group, are reacting today with incandescent rage that they could even be mentioned in the same breath as this act of political terrorism. That's called denial. When you put a politician in literal cross-hairs, when you call her a target, when you celebrate how many targets you have hit, when you go on national television and shoot guns, when you use the language of "lock and load" to describe disagreements over healthcare provision ... you are part of the problem.

The entire psychological structure of the "Tea Party" is rooted in the theme of patriotic armed revolt against an illegitimate tyrant. Violence and the rhetoric of violence is embedded within it. When you do that, someone somewhere will take you seriously.